Colombia First For Training In South America

Federacion Colombiana de Vela, supported by funding through the Colombian National Olympic Committee and IOC Olympic Solidarity hosted an ISAF Technical Course for Coaches from 23 – 29 August. The Federacion Colombiana de Vela are the first South American MNA to host a course since 2009.

Paula Douat of the Federacion Colombiana de Vela said of hosting the course, “The Colombian Sailing Federation (Federación Colombiana de Vela) is pleased to have received the support of the Colombian Olympic Committee, Olympic Solidarity and ISAF for the ability to host this ISAF Technical Course for Coaches. The objective of this course was to prepare sailing coaches with a unique and standardized protocol to teach the basic sailing skills to new potential sailors of different ages. Over 30 sailing coaches from all over Colombia have taken part of this course and, with help of the ISAF appointed coach we have worked to create a structure that enables all sailing clubs to teach sailing in Colombia in a unique way, with a clear syllabus that will bring a non-sailor to become a future sailing champion.

“Colombia has a huge potential to develop sailing. We have a coastline in 2 oceans (Atlantic and Pacific) and several lakes with exceptional sailing conditions. Despite of this advantage, sailing in Colombia isn’t very popular and infrastructure (clubs and marinas) not very developed. With this course we have motivated leaders that will encourage the development of our sport in every region of Colombia by teaching new potential sailors and motivating current sailors to seek a competitive career. As a Federation this course has helped support the development of sailing by helping bring our sport to more and more people. It is imperative that the teaching procedure we are developing with the ongoing support of ISAF is unique to Colombia, in order to comply with our national security, syllabus, skills and ability to generate our own course certification.”

Dan Jaspers, ISAF Training and Development Manager commented, “The development of sports-specific structures in Colombia are a good example of our Regional Development initiatives. We have a Regional ‘Mentor’ currently working with all our Group ‘O’ members and I am very encouraged to see how Paula Douat and the Federacion Colombiana de Vela are taking this offer of support and using every opportunity to work with ISAF to use all of the resources available. We have overcome many logistical challenges to enable this course to take place, with Paula and her team going the extra distance to make it all possible.”

Regular updates on all our programs (including pictures from all courses) are be available on our Training and Development Facebook page here and via Twitter at www.twitter.com/ISAFDevelopment

For a PDF copy of the ISAF Coaching Framework document used to develop National Coaching Education Pathways please visit our dedicated website page here.

Full details of the programs available through the IOC Olympic Solidarity funding can be found on the ISAF Website here. ISAF Technical Course outlines are available to download here.

To view a selection of Training and Development related videos please visit our dedicated YouTube channel here.

For information on all of the programmes and initiatives that have been developed by ISAF in order to help increase global participation in the sport, please visit our dedicated training pages here www.sailing.org/training or contact the ISAF Training and Development Department here.